OFFERINGS

I offer the following services. Please email me to create an opportunity.

Individual Counselling and Creativity Coaching

Commissioned Art Work

Lectures and Consulting


Research & Writing

Teaching and Workshops

Retreats

Individual Counselling and Creativity Coaching: Designed to help you tap into your innate creativity, find your voice, source your gifts, empower yourself, by being fully self expressed, as you align with your natural emergence. I will support you to become courageous, as you hone your expressive skills, perform your rage, paint that love, narrate that thing, create that project, voice that story that you have always wanted to bring forth. I support you, by helping you identify and address that which holds you back from your full self expression and agency, while giving you gentle and insightful feedback in a compassionate and private space. Together we can co-create a healing process, or an aesthetic and communicative product. Heal while you have fun, and are, finally, fully seen and heard. A package of ten x one-on-one personal Skype sessions, tailor-made for you – coaching your imagination, deepening your insight and technical skills, and developing your agency and communication. Empower yourself through sourcing your creativity. Please see Counselling page for in-depth details.

Commissioned Art Work: Meaningful, personalized paintings, doors, or mosaics created in consultation with you to meet your needs and aesthetic; carefully designed to suit your interiors – for your home, office or business. Please see Art Gallery page.

Lectures and Consulting: An informative session, designed to give professors, or those helping others, such as therapy professionals, educators, NPO’s or NGO’s, advice on projects that facilitate Creativity for Transformation. My book “Art Projects with Refugees and Survivors” is also helpful to teachers and therapists.

Research and Writing: Rigorous ongoing projects to pioneer new understandings of the importance of creativity for transformation and the evolution of human consciousness. Cross-cultural and globally relevant insights gathered collaboratively with funders or other experts in the field. Books, and articles commissioned by journals and magazines. Please see Books & Research page for more information.

Teaching and Workshops: Fun, custom designed, one day-, weekend-, or week-long packages for your class or group, including teens, college or university students. Also for groups of women, artists or creative adults interested in playing together, learning new skills and experiencing transformative creativity: including painting, drawing, beading, collage, mosaics, ceramics, journalling, performance. Classes can be co-created with you to include your specific educational content.

Retreats: Rejuvenating one day-, weekend-, or week-long retreats combining creative projects with deep relaxation and yoga – practices designed to access the deeper layers of the mind and imagination, for more illuminating and therapeutic results. These retreats are truly inspirational and regenerative, as they connect participants with their deepest self, through meditation, journaling, art, and performance, in a safe, compassionate and stunning natural setting.

Teaching Philosophy

As an expressive arts educator, researcher and counselor, I believe in the capacity of all the arts to transform and empower people to meet their highest potentials through creativity. As a transformative learning specialist, I believe in the capacity of people to grow and learn throughout their entire adult lives, due to inherent brain plasticity and an innate drive to self-actualize. As a meditator, I believe in deep relaxation as a way to access various imaginative, levels of consciousness. As an educational leader, I believe in safe and open learning spaces, focused on skills acquisition, creativity, communication, and personal growth. As a counselor, I believe in transformation through ‘voicing’ our issues, stories, concerns and visions, and in creating an atmosphere of inclusivity, diversity, respect, and the honoring of personal and cultural styles.

When facilitating, I combine various creative curricula (image, text, performance) with deep relaxation and mindfulness techniques in order to facilitate authentic, intrinsic transformation. I focus on three things:

1) people (and their stories/ issues/ concerns/ visions);
2) processes (both accessive and expressive);
3) and products (both authentic and communicative).

I value learner-centered, project-based processes that explore a variety of topics, including personal perspectives and issues, contemporary differences, identities, cultures, meanings, and the environment. I engage learner’s inquiry and personal voice, to express their unique complexities, challenges, goals and visions. The contribution and perspective of each individual is honored, thereby contributing to the growth of the learning community as a whole.

Curricula are determined by the client and context, as well as the needs of the group or individual. A supportive environment is built, with gentle feedback, so that learners feel safe and relaxed enough to explore creativity at depth. In my classes there is never a single correct answer, and there is no such thing as ‘failure’. ‘Retrying’ or ‘extended problem solving’ are encouraged as ways to grow resilience, and produce a more communicative product, true to the creator’s vision and intention. The skills of focus, imagination, adaptability, and sustained engagement are valued in my workshops. These contribute to the successful manifestation of ‘something’ out of ‘nothing’, turning ephemeral ideas into the production of real objects, that communicate who we ‘are’ to others, and which can influence culture. Through this process of externalizing our unique, inner worlds; by following our individual desires and values; and by birthing something new; we align ourselves with the emergent, creative principles of evolution itself.

I facilitate taylor-made opportunities for successful, hands-on, creative experiences in a location, and with materials, of your choice. Throughout the class, design principles and aesthetic sensitivities are learned. Practical, manual skills and kinesthetic dexterities are developed as a byproduct of exploring the imagination. Projects are designed to engage a spectrum of cognitive skills, with a focus on emotional and social intelligence, divergent thinking, and analytical problem solving. Throughout the creative process, learners are encouraged to feel, see and hear more acutely, thereby expanding imaginative landscapes, and developing a compassionate ‘witnessing’ capacity. Awareness of the relationship between self, other and materials is encouraged. Intrinsic motivation and ‘presentness’ are valued, along with courage, risk-taking, authenticity, perception, commitment, determination, openness, and compassion. I emphasize growing a tolerance for ambiguity, playfulness, curiosity, endurance, engagement, and seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary.

Elements and principles of aesthetics and design are a continuous backdrop to the classes. These conceptual understandings are always linked to the individual’s own experiences. By encouraging verbal, visual and gestural literacies, we art-iculate our inner worlds into being, thereby expanding our sense of authorship, authenticity and intimacy with others. Communication skills are practiced in a variety of ways, including experiential projects, journaling, group interaction, research, inquiry, presentation, and the curation of feedback, exhibition or performance. The articulation of the ups and downs of the learner’s creative process is always encouraged, including noticing the felt sense of excitement and fear, success and disappointment, so that a mature objectivity, as well as a courageous subjectivity, can be developed.

Concepts and language are kept simple during workshops, but when appropriate, the physiological, neurological, epistemological and ontological implications of creativity and transformation are explored, including best practices for professionals who are facilitating creative sessions for others. Contact me for further conversation regarding your particular needs.